Andy Beckett’s “Death in Woolwich” centres on Daniel
Williams killing Norman Francis in Woolwich, south-east London, on October 15,
2001. Beckett’s alleged theme is each death has outcomes, “aftershocks”.
They affect not only the victim’s family but also everyone involved
(1).

Beckett does not describe Francis’ death as a black-on-black.
However, he does say: “Francis was, Williams is, black”.
As a result, he does get across his message: it was black-on-black,
a phenomenon the Guardian informs its readers about regularly (2).

Beckett could have written an article focusing on the “aftershocks”
from the murder of Marcia Lawes by Delroy Denton in Brixton on April
15, 1995. Marcia Lawes was, Denton is, black. Like Francis, Lawes had
two children (blink 24/10/02).

Unlike Williams, the police could have stopped Denton killing Lawes.
On May 12 1993, during a raid on the Atlantic pub in Brixton, police arrested
Denton. They found out he had entered Britain from Jamaica illegally.
They bribed him into becoming an informer in exchange for a salary and
not deporting him. One year on, when he murdered Marcia Lawes, Denton
was still an illegal immigrant on police payroll (3).

If the Metropolitan police had deported Denton when they arrested him
in 1994, the “aftershocks” suffered by Marcia Lawes’
family would not have began with her murder in April 1995.

Beckett does not write about Marcia Lawes because his article’s
real theme is less to do with the “aftershocks” from Francis’
death. His theme is more to do with recycling police propaganda, which
stereotype Jamaicans as the personification of “ruthlessness and
ruthlessness”: doubly ruthless (4).

Beckett’s article hints at the Guardian’s ongoing connection
with the Metropolitan police anti-Jamaican propaganda. The connection
goes to back the 1980s when police first tried to link Jamaican Yardies
to crack cocaine and gun violence. In 1997, for example, the Guardian
set out to justify the disastrous results of such racial profiling,
including Lawes’ murder, in an article by Nick Davies: “How
the Yardie duped the Yard” (5).

Davies starts off by outlining what he claims was the “chaotic
background” which led the Metropolitan police to hire killers
as informers. First, “the Yardies who dominate the global sale
of crack cocaine … engage in ferocious violence” (6). Second,
by 1987, Yardies posed a threat to national security. Third, political
correctness and pitiful funding led to “a strategy of chaos”,
which left the police powerless to face up to “a ruthless enemy”.

According to Davies this “strategy of chaos” ended when
DCS Roy Clark, “one of the most experience detectives in London
got his hands on the problem”. Clark wrote a “confidential
report, which was a devastating exposé of the [police’s]
behaviour”.

Clark made 35 recommendations in his report. But “policy-makers
at Scotland Yard” only acted on his chief point, the setting up
of the National Drug Related Violence Intelligence Unit (NDRVIU).

Opened in August 1993, NDRVIU aimed to confront the Yardie threat.
Alas starved of “power and leadership”, NDRVIU soon ran
into trouble.

It is Davies thesis that after NDRVIU “opened”, lack of
“power and leadership” led the police to bend the law by
hiring killers, such as Delroy Denton, as informers.

Davies’ cause and effect thesis is believable only if readers
accept his chain of events as right.

An alternative chain of events runs thus. In the 1980s, as a pretext
for setting up an anti-black unit, the Metropolitan police imported
from America a link between crack cocaine, crime and black people.

In April 1989, the Association of Chief Police of Officers invited
Robert Stutman, chief of New York Drug Enforcement Agency, to speak
at its conference (Small 1995:401).

Stutman made two “apocalyptic warnings” about crack cocaine.
He warned ACPO, “I will personally guarantee you that, two years
from now, you will have a serious crack problem” (7).

Stutman’s other warning concerned the findings of what he said
was a soon to be published report. These findings he said would show
three-quarter of people who try crack get hooked after three tries (ISDD:
1989).

Both warnings were wrong. First, according to the Home Office, “in
1993 police seized 2.8kg [of crack], nearly double the figures for the
previous year” (Shapiro 1994:13). Second, on July 27 1989, the
Independent revealed the report to which Stutman referred did not exist.

Nonetheless, at Scotland Yard, Stutman warnings reinforced race based
policing. Yardies, police-speak for Jamaicans, were the target of various
strategies. One was to set up a “Yardie Squad” (Small 1995:393).
Another was to recruit informers to infiltrate so-called Yardie gangs.
These informers were recruited by SO10, the section of the Metropolitan
police that handles informants.

As well as Delroy Denton, the other informers who Davies says committed
crimes while on police payroll were Eaton Green and Andrew Gold. Their
role as informers featured in “The Infiltrators”, a book
written by two detectives, Etienne and Maynard. They renamed Eaton Green
“Aldridge Clarke” and Andrew Gold “Skank”. Etienne
was seconded to SO10 to chaperon Gold.

Like Davies, Etienne and Maynard claim SO10 began recruiting Yardie
informers “once the NDRVIU was up and running” (Etienne
and Maynard 2001:107). However by cross-referencing dates provided
by Davies, Etienne and Maynard it becomes clear that SO10 recruited
Green and Gold before NDRVIU opened in August 1993.

Eaton Green was “the first true Yardie ever” to become
a police informer (Etienne and Maynard 2001:108). Green was on the
run from the law in Jamaica when he settled in Brixton in February
1991. Constable Steve Barker arrested him in May. Barker knew Green
was an illegal immigrant, a fugitive who sold crack cocaine and carried
firearms in Brixton (8). Yet after his arrest, S010 recruited Green.
And set him free to carry on his criminal activities, sometimes helped
by the Barker.

In March 1993, for example, Barker knowingly allowed Green to bring
Cecil Thompson and Rohan ‘Bumpy’ Thompson into Britain
from Jamaica unlawfully. The trio then went on to robbed 150 people
at gunpoint at a blues dance in Nottingham on May 30 1993 (9).

Green was not the only one to bring known criminals into the country.
According to Davies, “on a trip to Jamaica in the summer of
1993”, someone “introduced a professional man” to
Steve Barker. It turned out that the man had worked as a police informer
in America. What’s more, Yardies “respected” him.
SO10 recruited him, “code-named him Andrew Gold” and bought
him to London to infiltrate and inform on local Yardies.

Davies’ story about how S010 recruited Gold, his arrival in
Britain and the length of his stay is at odds with Etienne’s
version of the same events. Etienne claims: “A team of senior
officers from Scotland Yard travelled to Kingston, Jamaica, with the
expressed intention of recruiting active Yardie gangsters to work
as informants in London” (Etienne and Maynard 2001:109). In
other words, Gold’s recruitment was not as casual as Davies
tries to make it look.

As regard the date of his arrival, Davies claims Gold returned to Jamaica
after “four months …in January 1994”. Gold, therefore,
would have had to arrive in Britain in August 1993. Etienne contradicts
Davies on this point.

Etienne claims he started a six-week secondment to SO10 “a month
before Skank [Gold] arrived in the country” (Etienne and Maynard
2001:110). SO10 assigned Etienne to get Gold familiar with London.

In September, he met Gold at Heathrow airport (Etienne and Maynard
2001:116). In October, Etienne’s boss complained to him that his
six-week secondment had mushroomed into “three months!”
(Etienne and Maynard 2001:130).

By mid-November: “After two and a half months Skank [Gold] had
found his feet” (Etienne and Maynard 2001:133).

Crucially, Etienne then claims “By May I had not spoken to Skank
[Gold] for three months” (Etienne and Maynard 2001:134).

Given that Gold, Skank, entered Britain in September and he was still
going to “a weekly debriefing session at Scotland Yard with his
handler” in May, he could not have returned to Jamaica in January
1994 as Davies claims (5).

This leaves the question of whether SO10 recruited Gold and brought
him to Britain in 1992 or 1993. Etienne is especially helpful on this
point. At the end of May, the very same month in which he spoke to Gold
for the first time in three months, the Eaton Green trio robbed the
blues dance in Nottingham (Etienne and Maynard 2001:135-136). The robbery
took place in May 1993 (8).

Therefore, the informer Davies calls “Andrew Gold” and
Etienne calls “Skank”, one and the same person, SO10 recruited
him and bought him to Britain in 1992. That is one year before Clark
signed his report on July 6 1993 and NDRVIU opened in August 1993.

Davies’ chain of events would therefore seem to be fictional.
Political correctness and pitiful funding did not lead to “a
strategy of chaos” which Roy Clark remedied by recommending
setting up NDRVIU. More accurately, institutional racism led to racial
profiling becoming the cornerstone of policing.

The upshot was a police force, which Davies claims was so poor it had
to use a pub as offices, had money to send “a team of senior officers”
to Jamaica. From where they recruited criminals recommended to them
by “Clarke [Green] and other informants” (Etienne and Maynard
2001:106).

On his arrival from Jamaica, police housed Gold in a luxury hotel.
They gave him a Golf Gti and mobile phone. The bills for them, the police
paid plus other living expenses such as food, wine, clothes, and the
rent of a dockland flat, which cost £550 per week. Plus he received
“ a lifestyle payment of £500 per week” (Etienne and
Maynard 2001:116,118,133).

By contrast, black people suffered the “aftershocks” from
the Metropolitan police infiltrating killers and crack cocaine dealers
into their communities. In particular, like Marcia Lawes, the 150 people
robbed by Green and Co were black.

Marcia Lawes’ murder by Denton might just be one of a number
of innocent black people gun down by gunmen on police payroll.

The “aftershocks” from such murders left victims’
family struggling to get to the truth and compensation from the police.
For example, the Metropolitan police have steadfastly refused Lawes’
family compensation that would be used to care for her two young children
(10).

If the Guardian focuses more on the “aftershocks” caused
by the actions of police paid killers and crack dealers rather than
recycling anti-Jamaican propaganda, there will be less grieving black
families and friends, and drugs in communities such as Brixton and
Woolwich.